(this is a cross-post from the release thread on summvm forums , the thread there seems pretty much dead atm)

basically the patch for DOS completes fine and without any errors but when playing it I get random freezes. The music will still play in the background (lapc-i) and the cursor continues to flash as usual... but the controls are stuck and you have to reset the pc.

I am using my p1/200mmx 128MB machine with a LAPC-I and a SB16 with DOS7.1
Normal dos MIs run fine , as all other games I am playing. There is no IRQ conflicts or hardware faults, the system has been running playing old DOS games for 3+ years now...
What I have tried so far is:
a. Using an XMS environment with HIMEM
b. Using an EMS environment with EMM386
c. Using a ramdisk to consume ALL XMS/EMS above 16MB (actually leaving ~15MB free and ~610kb conventional , thought I give it a shot)
d. Using either ctmouse or original ms-mouse drivers (tried it since the cursor was getting stuck, another crazy thought)

been testing more... I noticed that with "monkey s" soundblaster sounds all wrong with static, horrible! Naturally I could not just use the 486+ update of the game (another exe basically) so I went to BIOS and disabled both L1+L2 caches.. I got a slow pc under 386DX , run the game, had OK sb sounds but it still just freezes after a while...

edit: also tried running under 98SE, same thing, freeze with -r1 and horrible static with -s

edit: also tried without an autoexec/config, just mouse + sb16 init stuff, still the same problem
this is definitely a sb16 related problem IMHO since sb alone produces bad sound and the freeze always occurs between speech

edit2: tried with a 486/66 + CT1320B , it's OK... will try with the 8bit sb on the p1 machine
- no go, still the same corrupted sound

made further tests, if I disable only L1 cache then the sb driver works. Still I get the freezing though.
I also put the sound buffers to 64 , I could delay the freezing but eventually I got the freeze again....

haven't tested Fate of Atlantis but DOTT CD version that runs flawlessly ... will give Fate a shot later and see how it behaves
Relevant DMA/IRQs are already set to ISA/Legacy, IIRC HOT-591p does not have any ISA divider options...
In all honesty I think it's the game's problem, maybe some bug in the upgrade patch or something that manifests in my system. Original Lucas adventures run fine as-is and never troubled me , like every other game I've thrown in there...
It seems the devs are hard to reach nowdays so I just hope to find a non-BIOS solution to fix this... failing that I'll simply delete the ultimate talkies.... they are truly impressive but not if they don't work on my system

Well, after testing with 3 different mobos that use the VIA MVP3 chipset I have concluded that the freezing occurs when one uses a PS2 mouse on the onboard ps2 connector!
With a serial mouse the game never freezes, no matter how hard I try or for how long I play.
With a ps2 mouse it's just a matter of spending some time clicking like hell on the sleeping pirates (thus you hear a piece of dialog that restarts on the next click without delay).

I have no idea if there is a workaround for that PS2 mouse problem, I can only assume that the game doesn't like the ps2 port's address/irq on MVP3 chipsets or it's general implementation...?

I didn't have any roland equipment connected for the tests, just used SB for everything... different physical card but same 2230 model...
must be a bug after all... and I doubt it will get fixed any time soon

had a reply from the author of the patches and I finally tested Fate of Atlantis CDROM version (like Mau1wurf1977 suggested also) and I get the same erratic behavior as well... the author himself had similar issues with his 200mmx p1 DOS machine...

When I tested it I applied the official patches. Did not really test the version on the retail cd-rom , I see the patches offered better sound drivers and updates exes for fast machines.
I did test with L1 disabled.
I will try later with my newly installed mpu401+cm-32L combo ...
SB16 takes the usual sb16 resources: irq5 , dma1/5, address220, mpu300 (330 is roland)
On BIOS I have assigned all relevant resources to LEGACY/ISA and LPT uses IRQ7. Will try disabling it but I doubt it will make a difference tbh as the game has a setup program and auto-detects the SB16. But you never know... IIRC ps2mouse takes IRQ12 , will have to check that

keropi wrote:already tried that Mau1wurf1977 , ms mouse, ctmoue or even no mouse driver at all... once there is a ps2 mouse connected things go bad for me...

keropi wrote:I forgot to report that the freeze issue was found and was due to the mouse driver... using CTMOUSE v2.0a4 worked fine for me

How could another mouse driver fix a freeze issue which was there with no mouse driver at all? Is it possibly related to the IRQ you assign to the Soundblaster after all, in addition to the mouse driver maybe?I'd like to add that information to my page. It should be based on some insights which can be reliably fixed by reasoning though, but not on wild guesses.

I had been trying to run down a crash problem with the Sierra SCI 1.1 games (LSL6 and Freddy Pharkas) for several weeks. I noticed that the Windows 3.1 versions of these games both behaved a lot better, but I thought it had to have something to do with Windows handling sound. Well, Windows has its own mouse driver, so this makes sense too. I never even thought to look at the mouse driver, especially since CuteMouse is so well regarded.

At least in my case the answer seems to be to use the Microsoft Mouse Driver (8.20). CuteMouse 1.9.1 and 2.1b4 both have the same problem, and 2.0a4 just hangs on my system regardless of what flags I tried. I played the DOS versions of both these games for well over an hour without seeing this issue, and there is no way I would have been able to that previously.